Andrew Jackson: The Irony of Paper Money

(from getjacksonoffthe20.net)
very subtle!







There's two major reasons why it's ironic that Andrew Jackson is on the twenty dollar bill.
First and most obvious-he hated paper money.

Jackson was an opponent of the central banking system which printed currency and one of his major legacies was to not renew its charter and remove its gold deposits to state banks.

Andrew Jackson was a populist and always was suspicious of power in the hands of the elite. He saw the bank as something that could buy influence of politicians (there was probably some truth to this) and something that was inherently undemocratic as it could print money without oversight of elected officials (also some truth to that)

He favored an economic system with gold and other precious metals as the currency. He felt that these are the only monetary instruments that cannot be manipulated by powerful interests.

Second, there's the fact that Indian reserves to this day will often not accept twenty dollar bills.

Why do you ask? Well, his policies towards the Indians are worthy of an entirely separate blog post. Remember the Trail of Tears? That's Jackson.

This is doubly ironic due to the fact that Jackson would most likely not want to accept his own twenty dollar bill due to his stance on paper money vs. gold.